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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22613632">sunflowers in her hair</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentaclemonster/pseuds/tentaclemonster'>tentaclemonster</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/F, Hanahaki Disease, Hanahaki Kink, Kidnapping, Masturbation, Necrophilia, Serial Killers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 18:13:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,256</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22613632</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentaclemonster/pseuds/tentaclemonster</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Diana sees someone dying from their own unrequited love, it’s an accident. </p>
<p>All the times following it are not.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Woman Obsessed With Seeing People Die/Girlfriend She Gives Murderous Souvenirs To</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>241</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Femslash February</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>sunflowers in her hair</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the prompt ‘flower crowns’. An anon gave me the idea to use the flowers from hanahaki disease for this prompt and my brain took that ball and fucking ran with it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“I love you,” Naomi tells Diana every morning after she wakes up. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana smiles back and kisses her and thinks to herself </span>
  <em>
    <span>you’d be dead</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but she has been with Naomi for years now and the thought doesn’t come with as much feeling as it once did. Her mind no longer dwelling on what it would be like to see Naomi choke to death on petals, strangled by vines growing out of her own body, and wondering what species of plant life might have killed her if Diana had never loved her back at all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I love you, too,” she tells Naomi back every day, as routine as brushing her teeth or checking the mail and always just as true. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, either.”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then Diana gets out of bed to get ready for work at her flower shop, </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Rain Forest, </span>
  </em>
  <span>her body already thrumming with anticipation for what she’ll find when she gets there, like her veins are made out of live wire and there’s electricity humming beneath her skin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She kisses Naomi goodbye at the door before she leaves, but her head is always away already when she does. If Naomi has noticed her distraction, she has given no sign of it and says nothing. She only kisses Diana back and tells her she’ll see her soon.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a basement beneath </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Rain Forest</span>
  </em>
  <span>, as soundproofed and secure as money can afford to make it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana is the only one with the code on the keypad that unlocks the door. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No one else has ever opened the door or descended down the stairs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No one else has ever seen what there is dwelling down there in the dark.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When her employees ask what’s in the basement, she lies and makes up a story about fertilizer, chemicals, government regulations, safety. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“People make bombs out of that stuff, you know?” she tells new hires. “The government likes to keep track of who’s buying it and how much. It’s important that I keep up with what we have in stock and make sure everything I get is accounted for. It isn’t that I don’t trust you with it, I just like to handle some things on my own – and it’s less work for you, too, anyway, so just don’t worry about it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The first time Naomi came to </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Rain Forest,</span>
  </em>
  <span> months after they’d started dating and Diana already knew that Naomi was for keeps, Diana told her the same thing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Plus,” she added, “I don’t want you breathing any of the stuff down there, either.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why not? If it’s safe for you...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know, but you’ve only just gotten better and your lungs are still healing and all...I don’t want you to have a setback because of some stupid pesticides or anything.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Naomi laughed, but Diana could tell she was touched. She smiled at Diana softly and tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You worry too much,” she teased Diana and Diana laughed and bashfully agreed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Naomi never asks about the basement again.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The first time Diana sees someone dying from their own unrequited love, it’s an accident. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’s twelve years old at the grocery store with her mother, standing in the produce department looking for clementine oranges while her mother has gone off to another aisle to pick up something else. A man approaches her, big and tall and skeevy, smelling like stale tobacco and something sour like unwashed clothes and human filth. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He creeps Diana out and makes her wish her mother hadn’t left her, but her anxiety is forgotten when instead of saying anything, he starts to cough. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Petals as pink as her tongue spill out of his mouth as he hacks into his fist and they don’t stop coming. They fall on the floor, into Diana’s hair and on to her clothes. The smell of sweet, floral perfume comes with them, overwhelming the man’s repulsive scent, and as the man’s coughing worsens and he falls to his knees, vines and green leaves with budding pink blooms bursting from his mouth, his eyes wide and horrified, Diana watches in rapture until he takes his final breath. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She barely notices when other people start to come around to see what the commotion is all about, when they yell with dismay and cry and scream. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She only notices when her mother finally returns and pulls Diana away from the flowering body on the ground, forcing her to turn her head away as she roughly brushes the fallen petals off of Diana’s body.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana only notices then because she’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>annoyed</span>
  </em>
  <span> that her mother won’t let her keep looking.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is the first time Diana sees someone die from hanahaki disease, but it isn’t the last.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It is, however, the only time it happens by accident.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>After the incident at the store, Diana becomes fascinated and her fascination never stops. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She reads every book about hanahaki that there is, both romantic fiction and medical texts and everything in between. She watches the movies and the shows. She listens to hanahaki inspired music. She stumbles across a subreddit dedicated entirely to videos of people dying from the disease, gory clips of people with flowers growing out of their mouths and nostrils, sometimes bursting through their eyes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana bookmarks that sub. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time she’s thirteen, she’s visiting it every day. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the end of her thirteenth year, a video of a man’s body seizing as he’s killed by a lilac bush pushing its way through his throat becomes the first thing she ever masturbates to. She asks her mother to buy her a bottle of lilac perfume that Christmas and every time she wears it and catches the scent, she feels herself ache with desire at the memory of that video playing on loop in her head over and over and over, the best thing she’d ever seen in her life. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana discovers forums for people suffering from hanahaki disease and their loved ones not long after and it, like the subreddit, becomes a favorite site of hers. She reads over posts by people describing their symptoms in vivid detail, down to the species of flower that’s eating away inside of them and the pain it causes them. Some of them post pictures of bloody petals and thorny vines that have forced their way out of their bodies. Some post memes trying to find some levity in their suffering. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana reads it all like she’s starving for it and it is never, ever enough.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s through the forums that Diana learns of a volunteer program at her city hospital’s hanahaki ward. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’s in love with the idea of it instantly, enamored with the thought of being around people with the disease, of seeing it progress in them, of – perhaps, maybe – getting to see that moment when it reaches its penultimate stage and they succumb to the flora overtaking them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s days before her fourteenth birthday when she asks her mother to let her join the program, the only thing she asks for that year.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her mother denies her request immediately. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She is, in fact, so horrified by the idea that Diana would want to spend her free time with people who are dying from hanahaki disease after that incident at the grocery store years ago that Diana instantly learns what a bad idea it is to ever bring it up again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not until she’s eighteen and has moved out of her childhood home and into an apartment of her own that Diana finally gets to volunteer as she’d wanted to for years. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The hospital staff welcomes her happily and the patients she sees are grateful for the time she spends with them and the attention she pays them. No one thinks anything of that attention except that it means she’s kind and full of empathy for people suffering from what could be a terminal illness if they’re unwilling to get the surgery required to fix it. No one notices how her attention is a little too keen or how, sometimes, when a patient coughs up petals or vines or some other plant matter, she’ll secret a piece of it away in her pocket to take home.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana starts a scrapbook of all of her stolen material. She learns how to preserve plant parts specifically for the task and pastes them into her book, also learning about botany so that she can write down what species each piece is from along with the name of the person it came from. Botany becomes something of a second interest to Diana through this, something she loves not just because of her obsession with hanahaki – though, that does account for most of it – but as something that piques her curiosity all on its own, too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time Diana has been at the hospital for a few months, she’s already filled plenty of pages in her scrapbook up with details of hanahaki patients and the bits of plant that have come out of them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’s also made a friend – a cute nurse called Naomi who eats lunch with her every day.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re a really good person,” Naomi tells her one day over lunch in the hospital cafeteria. She pauses to take a drink of her bottled water, swallowing it before she goes on, “I don’t know how you do it. I did rotations in the hanahaki ward when I was an intern and I couldn’t stand it. It’s just so...</span>
  <em>
    <span>brutal, </span>
  </em>
  <span>dying like that because you love someone who doesn’t love you back. Not as bad as the cancer ward, but still – and you’re in there all the time. I could never do that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana shrugs like it’s nothing, but she’s still flattered at the compliment even though she knows her volunteer work has little to do with her goodness as a person. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not so bad. I mean,” Diana corrects herself, “it’s a difficult disease, but it’s fascinating, too, you know? And I know you see things in the ER that are hard, yourself – like that guy you were telling me about last week who came in with the giant abscess you had to lance? I could barely finish my salad just thinking about it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Naomi’s nose scrunches up and she shakes her head, laughing, as Diana watches her from under her lashes and appreciates how cute she looks while doing it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay, yeah, that was super gross,” Naomi concedes. “I’m just saying that I really admire all the time you put in here. At least when I have to squeeze the pus out of a guy who doesn’t realize that it’s a bad idea to shave with a dirty razor and then wait months to go to the doctor when his little shaving cut gets infected, I’m getting paid for it. You’re here working for free and running your own business at the same time and probably saving the world on the weekends on top of it. I’m five years older than you and I </span>
  <em>
    <span>wish</span>
  </em>
  <span> I had my shit together like that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana laughs and can feel her cheeks going hot as she blushes. When Naomi smiles at her, she can feel her heartbeat ticking a little faster in her chest and her whole body feels flush from it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You seem plenty together to me,” Diana says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, I try.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You do better than try. You’re succeeding.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They both go quiet after that, smiling at each other, something heavy and thick hanging in the air between them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The moment is only broken when Naomi suddenly turns her head to the side, bringing her arm up quickly so that she can sneeze three times in fast succesion into her elbow. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ugh,” she says when it seems the sneezing fit is over, lowering her arm and picking up a napkin to wipe her nose. “I hate that. Watch me end up with the flu or something because someone thinks their kid having a chest cold is an emergency.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana laughs again and the conversation drifts to other things. The moment they shared is put on the back burner, but not forgotten. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana does forget about Naomi’s sudden sneezing fit, though. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At least, for awhile she does.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The problem is that the hospital isn’t enough. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana gets to be close to people with hanahaki disease. She gets to see them cough out flowers and sputter out leaves and be bled by sharp thorned vines growing from their nostrils, but she knows there’s a limit to how closely she can watch before people stop thinking she’s just empathetic and start thinking she’s weird. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She also never gets to see any of the patients actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>die</span>
  </em>
  <span> from the disease. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There are a few close calls, when she’s in the room when it starts to happen, but the nurses and doctors always rush in the second the heart monitors start going off and Diana obediently rushes out to let them do their work. She only gets to see the bodies after sometimes, when a nurse asks her to help clean up the room, but even then she only gets a peek before the corpses are covered with a respectful white sheet that hides the damage the disease has done to them – and the plants growing from their mouths, flowering and beautiful – and they’re transferred to the morgue.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana tries satisfying her urge to see with videos online, but those prove to be less filling than they were to her when she was just thirteen. Even her first favorite, the man with the lilacs, elicits little reaction from her now. Watching it feels like watching an old, well-loved movie, but it gives her none of the thrill, the pure exhilaration, that watching it for the first time did.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She realizes soon enough that what she really wants is to be able to see someone die from the disease, up close and personal, with no possibility of being interrupted and forced to leave or observed watching and judged for it. She also realizes that the only way to make that happen would involve breaking about a hundred different laws and would likely make her a murderer or, at least, a monster by any reasonable definition of the word.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That realization doesn’t move Diana as much as she knows it should. She feels no guilt for it, no disgust at her own thoughts, no shame, though she is aware that she certainly should feel all of those things and more. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All she feels is anticipation, coiling so tight in her belly that she feels like there’s a mass of writhing snakes inside of her, starving, eager to get out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She starts brainstorming ideas on how to make her fantasy happen almost immediately and comes up with a plan soon enough. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It takes a lot less time to have the basement of her budding flower shop soundproofed and secured than she would have thought it would. When the rennovators ask her what she’s planning to turn the basement into, she tells them an office.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I like playing music when I work,” she says, “but I don’t want the customers upstairs to hear it. Hard rock isn’t exactly the kind of thing people like to listen to when they’re buying flowers, you know? For people looking to buy wedding bouquets, it’s no better than screaming would be.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Naomi coughs into a handkerchief, a wet and awful sound, so forceful that it makes her eyes water and Diana’s heartbeat skip with concern.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You should go see your doctor about that,” Diana urges her, rushing to hand Naomi her water which she takes and uncaps with a grateful look. “You don’t sound good, Naomi.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Naomi drinks the water and then closes her eyes as she swallows. When she opens them, she shakes her head. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sure it’s just bronchitis. It’s going around and every soccer mom in the city is bringing their kid in for it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Still...how many times have you told me how annoyed you are about people who don’t go see the doctor when they need to? Who let a cold turn into bronchitis and bronchitis turn into pneumonia and pneumonia turn into spending a month in a bed in the ER?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Naomi cracks a smile at that. It’s a small one, but it’s enough to hearten Diana – at least a little bit. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Throwing my own words back at me now, huh?” Naomi teases.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana smiles back at her, but the expression falters.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m just worried,” she says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Naomi’s smile softens and to Diana’s relief, she nods.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Alright, I promise if I’m not better in a week or if I suddenly start feeling worse, I’ll go to the doctor – but I’m positive it’s just a cold, Di. It’ll go away on its own.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana’s heart warms at the nickname and she feels relieved at Naomi’s promise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll hold you to that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sure you will.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>* </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Kidnapping someone isn’t as hard as you’d think. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After the basement is complete, Diana thinks about how to go about getting someone to put in it. It’s not difficult for her to figure out – she thinks of the hanahaki forums she’s been visiting since she was a kid immediately. More specifically, she thinks of the subforum specifically for sufferers of hanahaki disease to meet up with each other. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana isn’t stupid and she’s aware of all the ways things could go wrong and she could get caught, but at this point she’s gone too far and invested too much to stop. She tries to be as careful about it as she can anyway. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She buys a pre-paid smartphone with cash at a corner store near the hospital she knows only has fake security cameras from overhearing the cashier chatting with his boss about it before and makes sure she only uses it in crowded locations with free wi-fi – not a hard find in a city so big. She creates an account on the forums with it and makes a few introductory posts, concocting a story posing as someone with hanahaki disease. It’s incredibly easy to do, all of her obsession with hanahaki and her experience being around people who have it making it a simple matter to say the right things and play her part. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She gets plenty of interest from other users who’d like to meet, but Diana is selective in picking who she wants. She knows it has to be someone that no one would miss and so she scans through the post history of users who have messaged her, looking for ones with no family and friends, no job, no one to miss them when they suddenly disappear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She settles on a woman named Sharon – a skinny girl with curly red hair just a year older than Diana who started coughing up sunflower petals a month ago and has been progressively getting worse ever since.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana sets up a meeting with her not far from the flower shop, stopping to pick up two coffees from the Starbucks down the street as she promised Sharon she would in a text. It’s an easy thing, too, to pop open the top of one of the coffees and pour in the crushed sleeping pills she’d stolen from the hospital into it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After a hanahaki patient had died, Diana had been asked to clear out their room and the pills were in the bedside drawer. She knew they would have been thrown out anyway and so she took them, crushing them up into a fine powder once she got home. No one ever noticed they were missing, too busy worrying about the patients that were still alive instead of the things left behind by one who was already dead, but Diana already suspected they wouldn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon is smiling when Diana approaches her, her teeth white and even. She takes the coffee Diana offers with a thanks and makes approving sounds when she takes a large gulp of it. They chat and Diana suggests they go back to her shop, which Sharon agrees to easily. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’s already finished the coffee by the time they arrive and is blinking sleepily around at the plants in the store, swaying on her feet. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Sharon slurs, putting a hand out on a counter to brace herself as she stumbles. “Having hanahaki and running a flower shop?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana smiles and gently takes the empty cup of coffee from Sharon’s hand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t have hanahaki.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon blinks slowly, so out of it the confusion barely registers on her face. Something about the way her body trembles has Diana rushing forward quickly to wrap an arm around her, catching her before her legs collapse beneath her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re really tired,” Diana says. “I have a couch in my office if you want to take a rest.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon makes an indecipherable sound, a murmur whose words don’t have any shape, but she doesn’t resist as Diana leads her towards the basement door and does nothing but put her hand out to hold the railing once the door is open and they begin descending down the stairs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wha’...” Sharon mumbles, but Diana shushes her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s alright, you’re just going to sleep now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sleep?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” Diana says as they reach the bottom of the stairs. She leads Sharon a little further into the room, towards the wall farthest away from the stars, and then lets the other woman’s body fall gracelessly to the floor with no reaction from her but a quiet grunt. “You’re going to sleep for a little while.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana kneels over Sharon's body and rolls her onto her back before she takes the end of the manacles she has attached to the floor and puts the cuffs around Sharon’s ankles and then she does the same with her wrists with the manacles that are attached to the wall, leaving Sharon spread eagle and immobilized, unable to so much as turn to her side.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana stands above Sharon watching her sleep and feels her pulse quicken in anticipation for what she knows is to come.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It takes two days for Sharon to die. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s less time than Diana expected, but not particularly surprising. The effects of hanahaki disease are known to be exacerbated by certain conditions – lack of sleep, starvation, dehydration, stress. All of which Diana subjects Sharon to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana takes a week off from her volunteer work at the hospital, making up an excuse about having a cold that’s readily accepted, and closes her shop for the same amount of time, telling her cashier that she can have the week off.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That morning, Naomi texts her this: </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Heard you’re sick now, too? Tell me I haven’t given you what I’ve got.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>which makes Diana smile and feel a little guilty for not bothering to text her and let Naomi know she wouldn’t be in herself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She texts back: </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I blame the soccer moms. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>To which Naomi texts:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Ha! Feel better soon, then! I’ll miss you!</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>and Diana replies, her smile growing:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I’ll miss you, too, and I’ll be fine. Try to get better yourself and don’t forget your promise! Talk to you later.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She turns her phone off after that so it won’t interrupt her when she’s in the basement. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon is wide awake when Diana goes down the stairs, her eyes wide and red rimmed like she’s been crying. She looks at Diana with confusion in her eyes and a good helping of fear. Her limbs spasm and the manacles attached to them clink like she wants to get up or to at least put some distance between them, but she can’t. It’s impossible for her to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She swallows so hard that Diana can hear the gulp from across the room before she asks, her voice shaking, “Why are you doing this to me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana considers her for a moment, debating how to answer. In the end, she decides to tell the truth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I want to see what it looks like when you die.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon stares at her, her eyes widening even further. She inhales sharply, a short hitching breath that sounds like a sob.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s then that she starts screaming.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana winces at the first sound of it, but she does nothing else but stand there and wait. She knows it will only be so long that Sharon can keep it up and she’s right.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before long Sharon’s voice gives out and she’s left gasping for breath, her body writhing like a butterfly with its wings ripped off where she’s chained to the floor, tears streaming down her face. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana watches her with interest, but it’s muted for now. She thinks it will be until the disease fully takes hold of her. Sharon’s suffering now is only an appetizer for that main dish, nothing more and nothing less. Diana feels only the barest amount of enjoyment in it and all of that is borne from her anticipation. She doesn’t like seeing Sharon suffering as she is now just for its own sake, but she also doesn’t feel any guilt for it, either.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana thinks maybe she should be surprised by that, her lack of guilt, but she isn’t. She thinks she passed the point of being surprised years ago when she first saw that man dying on the grocery store floor and felt nothing but fascination for it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The room is soundproofed,” Diana says calmly. “You can scream all you want, but no one else is here and they couldn’t hear you even if they were.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Why</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” Sharon sobs, shaking.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This isn’t personal. I don’t hate you. You’re just...” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana pauses, thinking.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...convenient,” she finishes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon’s only reply to that is to keep crying. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana lets her, saying nothing else as she goes to sit on the small air mattress she set up in the corner of the basement in anticipation of having to spend some time in there with whoever she held captive. There’s a mini fridge plugged up nearby filled with bottled water and snacks, and off near the stairs is a small bathroom. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s all pretty dull at first. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon cries and whimpers and then she falls asleep, apparently exhausted. When she wakes up again she sees that Diana is still there and tries pleading for her freedom. She begs Diana to let her go. She tells her that she won’t tell anyone what Diana has done. She swears she won’t call the police.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana thinks she might actually be telling the truth, but she still ignores her. She knows that there’s no possibility of her releasing Sharon now and when after awhile Sharon stops begging, she thinks that she knows it, too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At some point, Sharon pisses herself and then the cycle of crying and sleeping starts again. It isn’t until hours later after Diana has fallen asleep on the air mattress herself that Sharon wakes the both of them up with her coughing. The sound jolts Diana awake and she rushes to sit up, her sleep filled eyes watching Sharon’s body shudder as she coughs and yellow sunflower petals puff out of her mouth like feathers from a pillow that’s been burst open at the seams. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon moans in pain in between coughs, her body shivering like she’s freezing and she might be since her pants are still dark with a wet stain from her piss and the basement is hardly warm. Diana watches, eyes glued to her, as she turns her head to the side every time she has a coughing fit and the petals spread out across the floor next to her head, sunflower seeds sputtering out of her next to them after awhile, hairy looking green stems poking out of her ears hours later.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana’s body thrums with heat as she watches, her mouth dry, her cunt throbbing and wet between her legs, giving a pulse of arousal every time Sharon makes a particularly anguished sound. She hardly second guesses the decision before she slides her hand beneath the waistband of her pants and starts touching herself, getting her clit between her index and middle finger and fondling it in a slick, rough rhythm between them in time to Sharon’s coughs, her breath coming in fast as the pressure builds inside of her and her hips start thrusting against her hand, chasing her completion. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana moans as she comes and keeps fucking herself even after she’s done, forcing her overstimulated clit into giving her another orgasm. She squeezes her thighs together, crushing her hand between them, when she comes a second time and swears she can feel her own fluids gushing out of her as she falls blissfully over the edge.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She pulls her hand out of her pants when she’s done and wipes her own wetness off on the blanket covering the air mattress, her heart pounding hard and breath panting and body feeling like it’s coated in a sheen of warmth and sweat, the scent of her own sex drifting up salty and heady to her nose.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon is still in pain on the floor, making horrible little choking noises and breathing audibly through her nostrils, loud enough for Diana to hear even over the sound of her own quick breathing. If Sharon noticed Diana getting off to her pain, she’s in no position to say anything, but Diana doesn’t care either way. This isn’t about Sharon or her discomfort, it’s only about Diana herself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana doesn’t sleep that night. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She stays up watching Sharon as the sunflower slowly pushes up out of her gaping, choking mouth, starting with a long, thick green stem with a green head at the end surrounded by leaves that eventually opens up and reveals a center full of tightly packed sunflower seeds and bright yellow petals. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s delicious to watch and Diana fucks herself multiple times through the night as she does, sliding her fingers into her wet cunt and thrusting them in herself as Sharon jerks against the floor, struggling to breath in earnest as more smaller sunflowers start to push out of her nose, her nostrils bulging obscenely as they do. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time Sharon finally dies from lack of air, giving one last jerk before going as still as a puppet with its strings cut, she has a giant sunflower growing out of her mouth, the head covering her like a mask, while smaller ones grow out of her nose and ears. Her eyes are wide open, blank, empty. They’re facing forward in Diana’s direction and Diana thinks it’s the most erotic sight she’s ever seen. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She stands up from the air mattress then on shaking legs and makes her way over to Sharon’s corpse, standing over her to look down at the beauty of her from up above before she lowers herself down, straddling Sharon at the waist. Her hands touch the sunflowers almost reverently, careful as her fingers caress across the scratchy stems, soft petals, and hard, rough seeds in the center of the sunflowers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon is still warm beneath her and Diana’s overfucked cunt gives a helpless throb when she notices, her thighs already squeezing together, her hips thrusting down against Sharon, and suddenly the need in her is greater than it’s ever been.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana keeps one hand on the large sunflower on Sharon’s face, her palm digging into the sunflower seed core of it as her other hand is busy between her legs. She fucks herself right there, moaning loud and heedless, knowing that no one can hear her. The movement of her fingers inside of her body is desperate and she doesn’t care at all how hard she squeeze’s Sharon’s body beneath her own or how hard her hips come down on hers. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana fucks herself like that until Sharon’s corpse goes cold and then she keeps going until her body refuses to come anymore.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Afterwards, Diana feels calmer than she has in her entire life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She feels filthy and tired and sore, but also calm like something has settled inside of her, like something in her is at peace. She gets off of Sharon’s corpse and when she looks down she sees nothing but waste to be disposed of. Not a person, but just the shell of one, empty and no longer having any use. Diana feels no guilt or shame even now for what she’s done, but only certainty that she needs to get rid of the body and so she gets to work. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She first clips the sunflowers from off of Sharon and sets them gently aside before she drags the body on to a tarp that she spreads out on the floor and, taking an ax that she bought at a hardware store two cities over just for this purpose, she begins to dismember the body.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s hard, bloody work, and Diana is panting and her muscles aching when she’s done, but she </span>
  <em>
    <span>does</span>
  </em>
  <span> get done.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She transfers the pieces of Sharon to an industrial bucket that the fertilizer she buys in bulk comes in and then throws the bloody tarp in on top of it before she goes to fill another bucket with water which she uses to convince some of the blood on the floor to go down the drain pressed into the concrete. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The whole thing takes hours and it’s dark by the time Diana has cleaned the blood off of herself, changed clothes, and gotten the bucket upstairs. She drives her shop’s van with the magnetic sign baring the shop’s name removed hours outside of the city to a rural stretch of beach touching the oceanside and with nothing but the moonlight shining down on her, she opens the container up and throws Sharon into the water one piece at a time, putting the bloody tarp and container both back in the vehicle when she’s done.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana knows it’s only a matter of time before Sharon washes ashore, but she trusts that she’s covered her tracks adequately. No one will notice Sharon missing and it might be years before anyone knows she’s dead besides Diana herself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If Diana is lucky, no one might ever know Sharon is gone at all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When she gets back to her shop, she takes the sunflowers she removed from Sharon and holds them like the most precious of objects in her hands, looking at them thoughtfully. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana thinks of Naomi then and smiles as an idea comes to mind. She grabs her supplies and begins the careful work of turning the flowers into a crown that she thinks will look lovely on Naomi’s head. It’ll be an apology gift, she decides, for not telling her that she wouldn’t be at the hospital all week. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She hopes Naomi likes it. She’s positive she will.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Diana quits her time off early, telling the nurse who heads the volunteer program that she must have only had a short virus because she feels completely well. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The nurse looks so relieved to see her, she doesn’t question it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We have so many people out with something,” the nurse laments, “there’s barely anyone here and I know the patients have missed you. We’re glad to have you back.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana is happy to be back and happier still to be able to see Naomi again. At lunch time, she has her sunflower crown in hand as she goes to their usual lunch table, excited to be able to give it to her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s only when she sees Naomi that she falters.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey,” Diana greets her as she sits down in her seat, taking in Naomi’s pale, drawn face across from her. Diana puts the flower crown down on the table and reaches a hand out to gently touch Naomi’s wrist. “Are you okay? You look...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana trails off and Naomi, though looking entirely unwell, still manages a small smile.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Like shit?” she suggests.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana tries to smile back, but she can’t bring herself to do it. “You look sick, Naomi. What’s going on?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The hesitation is so blatant in Naomi’s face that Diana could be blind and still not miss it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I am sick,” Naomi finally says, then gives a short, humorless laugh. “It’s ironic, actually, when you think about it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you mean?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I got worse while you were gone and I went to the doctor like I promised you, even though I already knew what was wrong. I really thought it was just a cold at first, but the symptoms...” Naomi stops, pausing to take a deep breath that she exhales slowly. “Remember how I told you I couldn’t stand doing your volunteer work? Well, it seems like now I’m living your work instead.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana stares at her for a moment, trying to parse out what she’s saying. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It doesn’t take long to understand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You have---?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hanahaki.” Naomi nods her head quickly. “Yes. My cough got worse and then I started coughing out these – these </span>
  <em>
    <span>petals</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Yellow roses, the doctor told me. He sounded so fascinated when he said it, too, like it matters what kind of flower it is when it’s killing me either way.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana licks her lips, her heart pounding with concern and something else. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A part of her is worried for Naomi, terrified of losing her, yes, but at the same time – </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At the same time, another part of Diana thinks of Naomi the same way Sharon had been in her final moments. Tied down, writhing, yellow roses growing from her mouth and cutting off her ability to breathe. A part of Diana thinks of Naomi like that and feels herself warm at the image even as it makes her nauseous, too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then there’s another part, separate from the other two, that’s jealous. Completely and utterly </span>
  <em>
    <span>incensed</span>
  </em>
  <span> that Naomi loves someone else enough for it to be killing her. That she loves someone other than Diana herself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The part of her that’s worried is the strongest of the three, followed closely by her jealousy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Does the person know?” Diana asks, and there’s no need to specify what person she’s asking about when talking about this disease.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Naomi sniffles and looks at Diana pointedly before she says, “She does now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And all Diana can do is stare back as her heart thuds hard and she’s taken completely off guard.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know this is awkward,” Naomi fills in the silence when Diana says nothing. “I don’t blame you for it. You didn’t make me feel how I do for you or make me sick. This disease is just a – a stupid genetic fluke. It’s not something I hold against you that you don’t feel how I feel back --”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But I do,” Diana interjects finally, her face going hot at the way Naomi just stops and stares at her. She swallows hard and says again, “I do feel the same way.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Naomi’s mouth parts and she looks at a loss for words, but at the same time...hopeful.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the hope that helps Diana to continue, feeling something warm unfurling in her chest as she does.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not just saying it to say it, Naomi. I know it wouldn’t help if I were. I’ve...felt this way for awhile now, you know?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t,” Naomi says faintly. “I mean, I hoped, but...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She looks down from Diana’s eyes then and her gaze catches on the flower crown on the table, a curious look coming across her face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s that?” she asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana looks down at it and laughs despite herself, despite...</span>
  <em>
    <span>everything</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It was supposed to be a present. I made it for you. I wanted to apologize for not letting you know I was going to be out myself, but considering the circumstance now, it seems...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Naomi looks up, away from the flower crown, and she and Diana hold each others’ gazes for a long moment. Naomi’s lips twitch first and then suddenly they’re both laughing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>God</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Naomi says, shaking her head, “what a stupid pair we are, huh?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana snorts. Her hand goes to the flower crown and she mimics pulling it away. “Does that mean you don’t want it or –?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Naomi’s hand shoots out to cover Diana’s before she can finish speaking, her palm warm on top of it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, no, no. It’s my present and they’re not yellow roses, so give it to me. No take backs, okay?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana smiles and overturns her hand to catch Naomi’s in a hold. She squeezes it lightly and feels thrilled at the way Naomi’s grin widens when she does. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No take backs,” Diana agrees.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She holds Naomi’s hands for a few minutes longer and only lets them go to pick up the flower crown, gently pushing it onto Naomi’s head before she leans forward and just as softly presses their mouths together for a kiss.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Naomi’s condition improves rapidly once she and Diana are together, her color coming back to her cheeks and her mood improving. She stops coughing after just a few days and not so much as a rosebud comes out of her again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I never want to see another rose,” she tells Diana after they get out of her doctor’s appointment and she’s gotten the all clear. “Not yellow, not red, not pink – none of them. Promise you’ll never bring a rose near me? Any other flower – hell, a cactus if you want – but no roses.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No roses,” Diana says. “I promise.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the happiest Diana has ever been and if she sometimes thinks of what might have happened if she’d rejected Naomi and feels her body responding to it in certain ways, then Diana is satisfied that it’s only a fantasy and not one she feels any need to see become a reality. She’s happier with Naomi than she would have been without her and besides – Diana doesn’t need to see her girlfriend succumb to hanahaki when there are others who can take Naomi’s place and give her her fix instead.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The peaceful mood Diana got from watching Sharon die only lasts a few weeks before she starts to feel a kind of itching under her skin, a need for something, a drive to act, a longing and a desire to feel that way again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diana finds herself trawling through the meet-up section of the hanahaki forums before she’s even consciously decided what she’s going to do, but when she’s looking for a new victim that no one will miss the choice is all hers. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s just as easy to drug a woman and get her into the flower shop’s basement the second time as it was the first and with the long hours Naomi works, often working third shift in the ER, there’s no one to notice it when Diana isn’t at home when she should be. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When this one dies chained down and screaming, it takes only a day for the hanahaki to fully overtake her. She sprouts chrisanthemums out of every hole in her body and the flowers even push out of the irises in her eyes. Diana’s fingers are buried in herself as she watches it happen, nude on top of the dying woman’s body and gripping at her breast with the one hand she has free. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She gets rid of the body the same way she did the last one and when she sees Naomi in the morning, she brings her another crown made of the flowers the dead woman left behind. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the second time, but it’s far from the last, and Naomi’s collection of flower crowns only continues to grow.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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